Sleepless Dreams
It is known by many names,
this force that sleeps by day,
strategically echoing its restless percussion by night.
Buried in crumpled sheets and pounded pillow,
some listen carefully,
others flutter their eyelids casually,
distrusting sleep's desire to have us naked,
revealing all.
REM knows
what delta can only imagine
and theta deems unfathomable.
And so it goes…
Those unable to see in daytime darkness,
shutting their eyes to see in imagination,
become painters,
composers,
poets,
sleepers that never sleep,
becoming instead the rasp of a file,
honing words into melodious colors,
scratching with pencil,
brush,
baton,
a feast the famished soul consumes
by small bites,
minute chewing,
digesting yesterdays
into tomorrows,
allowing courses once filling
to become but appetizers
preparing anew mind's palate
for feasts yet to come.
Hunger's vision awaits,
while scraps served on tables of molten rock
carry the tasteless bland across
barren landscape once alive,
now but a rebirth of left-overs
the spoiled desserts of another murderous century
needing to dream.
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Last night she wanted to hear Clementine, remembering that her teacher in her Saigon high school in the class sing it, like I do, all the time, rather badly to her delight.
The version she played on her iPad was way too fast for me as if the singers were trying to get it over with rather than savoring the poor child's fate. "… Dreadful sorry, Clementine!"
I found myself googling in my mind in my sleep and finding out that there were actually three historic Clementines in Gold Rush San Francisco that fell off ships. Two were rescued and pulled back on the boat and one was washed up on the shore, seemingly dead, but came back to life as rescuers went to Ieave. Someone wrote a song and it spread across the country where many schools required the singing of Clementine as a national anthem for children until the 1950s when it was no longer required. Today very few young people know the words or the tune, deemed too violent for young ears.
I woke up and had done my research. But was my dream correct? Not on your life! Why I write fiction. ;-)
Ron